Automatic two dimensional food slicers are known to provide the capability of feeding food products into the path of cutting blades to simultaneously cut the food product into multiple widths and lengths. A machine of this type is disclosed in the commonly assigned U.S. application Ser. No. 07/876,123, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,271,304. The height of the end product was determined by the height of food product when fed into the slicer. If the height of the food product was greater than the desired height of the end product, a separate slicing or cutting operation was required before the food product was fed into the automatic two dimensional food slicer. The separate operation involved separate and additional handling of the food product. Rarely would the operation of the separate operation be scheduled or completed in conformance with the requirements of the two dimensional slicing.
Prior attempts have been made to produce a three dimensional cut in one operation by attempting to force the food product through a grid work of knives that were arranged similar to the well known vegetable slicer such as is used to produce potato french fries. As the product exited the grid work, another knife would cut the pieces to length. As far as is known this has proved unsuccessful, due in part to the lack or rigidity of the food products.